Iranian Jewish man murdered in Tehran

A Jewish man dating the daughter of a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was murdered, an Israeli television station reported.

Daniel Mahgerefteh, 24, the son of a well-known Iranian businessman and a member of one of the wealthiest Jewish families in Iran, was killed last week in Tehran, Israel's Channel 2 reported on Jan. 3.

The Jewish community reportedly believes he was murdered because of his relationship with the Iranian woman, but Iranian authorities say he was killed during a robbery.

According to Armin Avi Kreuznacher, an Iranian-born Jew who emigrated from the country in 2010, Mahgerefteh was killed by the woman’s family after the two had intimate relations and he refused to marry her.

“The murder was carried out as revenge for dishonoring the family,” said Kreuznacher, who currently resides in Germany .

Police investigators reportedly told the woman that she had “done a good deed.”

The Jewish community in Iran, estimated at around 8,700 people, is afraid following Mahgerefteh’s murder, the second of its kind in as many months, he said.

At the end of November, a Jewish woman in the central Iranian city of Isfahan was murdered and mutilated in what is believed to be a religiously motivated attack.